Monetizing your stuff

[JackLuis]

Most writers earn less than £600 a year, survey reveals

Now that the Usual Suspects have had their say:

The Guardian says writing is poorly compensated. Say $1,000 a year.

The publishing industry has never been so sharply divided. In the week when the erotica writer Sylvia Day signed a staggering eight-figure two-book deal with St Martin's Press, a survey reveals that 54% of traditionally-published authors and almost 80% of go-it-alone writers are making less than $1,000 (£600) a year.

More than 9,000 writers, from aspiring authors to seasoned pros, took part in the 2014 Digital Book World and Writer's Digest Author Survey, presented at this week's Digital Book World conference. The survey divided the 9,210 respondents into four camps: aspiring, self-published only, traditionally-published only, and hybrid (both self-published and traditionally-published). More than 65% of those who filled out the survey described themselves as aspiring authors, with 18% self-published, 8% traditionally-published and 6% saying they were pursuing hybrid careers.

 

[lovecraft68]

Now that the Usual Suspects have had their say:

The Guardian says writing is poorly compensated. Say $1,000 a year.

I believe it.

I know that just from conversing with some people here and other writers off lit.

A lot depends on how much you choose to or(in the case of life/time restraints) can put into it.

If you are a self published it is important to try to build a following and do that by continuing to put out work.

I had someone recently tell me when I was talking about how I was dragging on a recent e-book.

"They don't all have to be great."

Sounds like shitty advice, but I understood what they meant. You do what you can to make the book solid, but not everyone has to top the last one and not every story is is as good or bad as your others.

I know many that make that number monthly. But its off of 60 titles and several sites and a lot of time and work. Some cannot devote that much time or are not willing to all but bleed for it and that is what you have to do.

 

[robertreams]

You cannot say, "you can't make money" and then say" I have made $100" in the same paragraph. I have been writing for 50 years but in Smashwords I have made $11.80 in three weeks, hmm, let't see !! times twelve times fifty., well, it i not very much, but. . . My point is: I was ecstatic to find Literotica where now over 250,000 people have read my work for free. And that has led me to a site on which i can actually sell my writing. So Far so Good.

 

[robertreams]

One other thing. I am very close to the point of "coming out" as a writer of porn. Arthur Miller was brave. Even Hugh Hefner was brave. Maybe it is time we all took a stand. I know what i do is not evil. I know the sex I enjoy myself is not wrong or evil. I know my writing is good, people enjoy it. I am inspirational. We have come a long way. Oh how I wish. . .

 

[Mara12]

From a reader's perspective

At the risk of muddying waters and pissing everyone off, I'll dip my toe in with a few comments.

>"The critical - or logical - flaw to what the pilot is saying, is that if you go down the (theoretical) path of making it a numbers game, you really end up confronted with a presumption about standards and writing quality that most people would not be willing to make - namely, that if you crowded out the entire scene with thousands and thousands of titles that you spent all your mornings writing and handing up to a publisher who edited them brilliantly and diligently in five minutes flat, the quality of your work would be unquestionable..."

My take on what sr71plt was saying is twofold: that having a lot of work out there increases the chances for any single reader to run into any single author's work, and that, once an author has found a captivated reader - based on quality/subject matter/whatever- it would be to that author's advantage to keep the reader enthralled by providing new work regularly. Otherwise the needy and fickle reader gets lost elsewhere. I completely agree, and hope I haven't misrepresented his points.

BTW, my limited understanding of Salinger was that his bizarre celebrity status came in no small part from his studied aloofness; not something likely to be replicated in today's internet world.

One thing that the whole social media aspect tries to replicate to a very limited success is word of mouth: in the past as well as now, a happy reader or movie goer would talk to friends about books & movies they liked. Don't know about y'all, but my GoodReads account doesn't mention any of my erotica guilty pleasures. Maybe you gentlefolk are braver than I, but there you have it, I'm a coward. I'm not likely to recommend any books by authors I like here on Lit to any of my friends directly. I'm probably not a huge exception. So the advertising potential is limited to on-line reviews of books at the publisher's site ( which I do on Amazon but not on iTunes because of how I can get plausible deniability), bringing us back to a game of chance that some people who like one of the books I've browsed happens to also have liked/bought one of your gentlewriters' books, OR that I'll actually scroll down through the Lit Authors' Published Books page ( nice addition, but not sufficient) and find one of your books. Anything else each author can do to increase the visibility of their books until s/he captures a dedicated audience will only increase their chances to be found, including alluring covers (most are pretty embarrassingly atrocious), interlinking web sites that refer to books, contributing stories to multi-author anthologies, which I'm not sure has been mentioned yet (you're attracted by an author you know and find authors you didn't know but really enjoy), and yes, giving cheap readers like me some freebies, because when we're hooked, we're more likely to splurge.

BUT: nothing can replace quality of writing - it's necessary but not sufficient.

>"That is a highly dubious proposition, and not that I was ever a great fan of J. D. Salinger for instance, but his is an example of the case: limited output, but highly commercially successful and arguably, of very high quality. He's not less of an author because Sr71plt produces more words...? You would think...?"

(I don't remember Pilot comparing himself to Salinger, but I haven't read every word of his posts.)


>"This is not a subject that needs to go down into any 'negative node' as it were - into bickering and so on."

I hope none of you gentlefolk take my ramblings in any other spirit than meaning to add to a friendly and open discussion - I am on the thread primarily to listen, since I have zero literary publishing experience, though a lot more in my professional life. In that world, I find my colleagues' articles by browsing tables of contents, reviews, follow pointers by other colleagues, and chance! And there too, some authors get read much less than they deserve, and others much more. C'est la vie....

 

[sr71plt]

Yes, you can agonize over squeezing out one work that is crap just as easily as a dozen. The synergy in terms of making money off of writing is having multiple titles available and readers looking for more--and satisfying that need. If you write crap, you'll soon get that message and not have to write more. Your writing can be brilliant or crap either way. A good writer is a good writer and crappy one is a crappy one, regardless of output.

But anyone who doesn't want to believe this basic tenet of book promotion is quite welcome to put all of their hopes into one work in the marketplace, as they please. And, since the thread is about making money at writing, to be surprised that their book income drops like a rock, as they please (and if they are really, really dumb).

And, no, I haven't compared myself to Salinger in writing quality. The report card on Salinger, though, is that he was a one-trick pony and rather pathetic in the waste of his writing life (and his life in other ways as well). Another author in the same vein is Harper Lee. Whenever I'm asked what the greatest novel has been, I answer To Kill a Mockingbird. By not writing anything else, though, she's increasingly being painted with the "She didn't write it; Truman Capote did" brush. Not only her continued ability as a writer is brought into question, but also whether she ever actually wrote anything at all is brought into question.

For most of us, success in the book marketplace hinges on keeping the supply going. That's not exactly a state secret.

 

[sr71plt]

This false comparison LC was attempting to draw on production was just a shell game borne either of ignorance of book publishing or just the usual attempt to rag on me personally (or, most likely, both). If you are a one-horse writing pony, sure, self-publishing is the best route in terms of (non)profitability of writing for the marketplace—especially if you don’t bother to get it edited. And, sure, you can make more profit self-publishing, on a single title basis, than you can by going with a publisher—especially if you turn a blind eye to your production and distribution costs (and if you don’t shell out for editing and are willing to be writing only for the great unwashed with no quality expectations). (Can make more profit, but not necessarily will—because you can screw yourself financially three ways from Sunday through inexperienced self-publishing.)

But in the time that you can write, produce (completely at your own cost), distribute, and do the accounting on profits of one self-published book—even if you were doing it from good experience and didn’t screw anything up, if you had published through a publisher, you could have written at least two, most probably three, books to the market—and without upfront costs. The burden of sharing profits starts to evaporate almost immediately.

So, don’t fool yourself on profitability unless you are a one-pony show author--or are writing substandard material (albeit maybe in a sought-after niche) that no one else will commit to. It’s great that self-publishing exists for those who like to do it all and/or can’t land a publisher (because nobody but the author believes in the book enough to commit to it—which is an ominous sign right there), but you are only kidding yourself if you think that self-publishing is more profitable to the author for a multiple-book run of production than having a publisher doing it all but the writing and taking a share of the per-unit profit. This is even before factoring in the sales advantages of being represented by a publisher rather than presenting yourself as a self-published independent.

 

[lovecraft68]

This false comparison LC was attempting to draw on production was just a shell game borne either of ignorance of book publishing or just the usual attempt to rag on me personally (or, most likely, both). If you are a one-horse writing pony, sure, self-publishing is the best route in terms of (non)profitability of writing for the marketplace—especially if you don’t bother to get it edited. And, sure, you can make more profit self-publishing, on a single title basis, than you can by going with a publisher—especially if you turn a blind eye to your production and distribution costs (and if you don’t shell out for editing and are willing to be writing only for the great unwashed with no quality expectations). (Can make more profit, but not necessarily will—because you can screw yourself financially three ways from Sunday through inexperienced self-publishing.)

But in the time that you can write, produce (completely at your own cost), distribute, and do the accounting on profits of one self-published book—even if you were doing it from good experience and didn’t screw anything up, if you had published through a publisher, you could have written at least two, most probably three, books to the market—and without upfront costs. The burden of sharing profits starts to evaporate almost immediately.

So, don’t fool yourself on profitability unless you are a one-pony show author--or are writing substandard material (albeit maybe in a sought-after niche) that no one else will commit to. It’s great that self-publishing exists for those who like to do it all and/or can’t land a publisher (because nobody but the author believes in the book enough to commit to it—which is an ominous sign right there), but you are only kidding yourself if you think that self-publishing is more profitable to the author for a multiple-book run of production than having a publisher doing it all but the writing and taking a share of the per-unit profit. This is even before factoring in the sales advantages of being represented by a publisher rather than presenting yourself as a self-published independent.

I haven't posted on this thread in 2 and a half months and you come back in a rant to insult me?

What's the matter Pilot, no one paying attention to you so you need to muck up shit?

You're doing a very good job of late of proving your obsession. Even when I have long abandoned a thread, my name keep coming out of your mouth.

 

[bashfullyshameless]

I hate bragging. I hate it. I hate that guy who constantly self-promotes. But I've learned that as an author, I kind of need to start doing things like that. So, at the risk of sounding like an arrogant ass, I felt the need to respond to this thread when I stumbled across it today (after not being on the boards for a while).

I started writing on Literotica in September of 2010. I've taken work from Literotica and self-published it, and I've paid real bills with that money. I've even paid the rent.

And then I self-published a sci-fi novel, without any erotica at all yet under the same name, and it kicked around in Amazon's top 10 in sci-fi for a couple MONTHS. I absolutely owe a great deal of that to the readers who followed me from Literotica, who picked that book up and gave it a chance and then gave it their reviews, because that created visibility and legitimacy that in turn attracted other readers.

I'm not ready to quit my day job, but for the last year I have paid most of my bills with my writing.

I can't speak to anyone else's experiences, or their challenges or their frustrations. But I can say without a doubt that yes, you can indeed capitalize on your work on Literotica, because I've done it.

 

[LadyVer]

I hate bragging. I hate it. I hate that guy who constantly self-promotes. But I've learned that as an author, I kind of need to start doing things like that. So, at the risk of sounding like an arrogant ass, I felt the need to respond to this thread when I stumbled across it today (after not being on the boards for a while).

I started writing on Literotica in September of 2010. I've taken work from Literotica and self-published it, and I've paid real bills with that money. I've even paid the rent.

And then I self-published a sci-fi novel, without any erotica at all yet under the same name, and it kicked around in Amazon's top 10 in sci-fi for a couple MONTHS. I absolutely owe a great deal of that to the readers who followed me from Literotica, who picked that book up and gave it a chance and then gave it their reviews, because that created visibility and legitimacy that in turn attracted other readers.

I'm not ready to quit my day job, but for the last year I have paid most of my bills with my writing.

I can't speak to anyone else's experiences, or their challenges or their frustrations. But I can say without a doubt that yes, you can indeed capitalize on your work on Literotica, because I've done it.

Your book blurbs are great. And I wish other writers warnings were as explicit. I'm tired of buying books where the author promises one thing and delivers another. Good bio as well. Looks like you have some great stats on Amazon.

I'm definitely checking out Poor Man's Fight. I recently received a big credit from the Amazon class action lawsuit, but have been careful about what I spend it on.

PS I like the book covers as well.

 

[bashfullyshameless]

Your book blurbs are great. And I wish other writers warnings were as explicit. I'm tired of buying books where the author promises one thing and delivers another. Good bio as well. Looks like you have some great stats on Amazon.

I'm definitely checking out Poor Man's Fight. I recently received a big credit from the Amazon class action lawsuit, but have been careful about what I spend it on.

PS I like the book covers as well.

Thank you! The book covers are an investment I made AFTER doing well with Poor Man's Fight -- I certainly didn't have the money for them (or really much of anything fancy at all) when I first started out. However, one can get good cover art for between $300 - $500 if you look around... you just need to be shop. And never, EVER try to get an artist to lower their prices; they know what it's worth and they almost always quote prices lower than they really should, because everyone in America suffers from the Wal-Mart effect of wanting unrealistic prices. If you try to talk them down, you're probably just twisting a knife.

As for the warnings... you might be surprised how many people look at those but don't think I'm serious. Most of the negative feedback I've ever gotten on those books boils down to "This book did what it said on the label and I'm unhappy about that."

 

[sr71plt]

Don't kid yourself. You can get good cover art for $30. Cover designers are thick on the ground in this advanced computer age. Even at a printing house that has cover designers on staff like RR Donnelley, you can get a professional-quality one for $100. This is where my falling out with LC started. A self-publisher who pays more than $50 for a cover has about zero chance of recouping production costs. Self-publishers need to be smart about this and sensible, not starry eyed, about their production costs, and I hate to see authors here led down an expensive garden path like this.

 

[funinthesungirl19]

Yup. Until you get really famous, stick to paying $30-$40 (or less, if you can manage it) for cover art. The trick is that you won't get a custom cover - you'll have to stick with a pre-made cover. I use goonwrite.com for my covers - I buy them in bulk, and they work out to about $20 each.

The original poster - I'm not sure if you are still looking for answers. Yes, you can make money at this. However, if you want to reliably make money, as opposed to waiting for lady luck to strike, here's what seems to work from my experience:

- Write a lot. Make sure the stuff isn't crap, but don't spend hours polishing. You are more likely to make money by selling 2 copies a day from 100 books, vs. selling 200 copies of one book. That's the numbers game. Play it.

- Don't pay big bucks for editing - you can't afford it.

- See above point for cheap covers.

- Taboo sells. Incest, pony girl, deflowering virgins, ageplay (fucking huge right now), spanking, forced consent, kidnap fantasies, blah blah blah. Pound out a 7k-10k short story, give it a semblance of a plot, and there's enough people looking for a middle-of-the-night fix that you'll make decent money. (Sigh. I wish I wrote more taboo stuff. I'd make a killing following my own advice.)

- Write series, not stand-alone books. See if you can make the first book of the series free, and draw your readers in.

For the record, I've been doing this for 6-7 months. I write quickly. I work at it. My daily writing goal is 2k words, and I hit it most days. I've got 7-8 books (novels, novellas, short stories) in the marketplace. I'm not a bad writer, but I'm not Hemmingway either. I don't make mortgage-type money, but I do make enough to go on a couple of really nice vacations a year.

Happy writing!

 

[KlaytonFrost]

Amazon / Smashwords etc and self-promoting is a legitimate enough way to go. You just have to be prepared to work hellishly hard at it. Finding a publisher is hard too, of course. There's really no easy route

 

[Mara12]

Curious about covers...

Regarding available cover art, once you buy it, are you allowed to modify it, play with it in Photoshop or whatnot?

 

[funinthesungirl19]

Regarding available cover art, once you buy it, are you allowed to modify it, play with it in Photoshop or whatnot?

I can't with the ones I buy. I supply the title and other information - I get a jpg that's set up for the Kindle store. I don't think I've ever heard of a cover art place that will give you the Photoshop.

 

[LadyVer]

Don't kid yourself. You can get good cover art for $30. Cover designers are thick on the ground in this advanced computer age. Even at a printing house that has cover designers on staff like RR Donnelley, you can get a professional-quality one for $100. This is where my falling out with LC started. A self-publisher who pays more than $50 for a cover has about zero chance of recouping production costs. Self-publishers need to be smart about this and sensible, not starry eyed, about their production costs, and I hate to see authors here led down an expensive garden path like this.

bashfullyshameless's point seemed to me to be that after he had done well with his books, he then made the choice to buy higher quality covers. Now, I have no experience in publishing, but I've read enough to know that authors, those who have trad experience and those with self-pub experience, will pay $150+ on covers. I would guess from bashfully's stats on Amazon that he's more than recovered the production costs.

I agree with you about self-publishers being smart with expenses. It makes good sense to keep production costs as low as possible when the author doesn't know how many books he/she's going to sell and hasn't built a platform. But when the book does well enough, the author has more options, like getting higher quality covers, and if needed, to finally get editing issues fixed.

 

[funinthesungirl19]

I don't think the covers I buy for $20 are low quality.

http://www.amazon.com/Tara-Crescent/e/B00FY426O0

I think the words high-quality and low-quality are a bit confusing here.

What you get for $100+ is increased flexibility in what you want. For $20-$30, you get a pre-made cover. If you find a pre-made cover that will fit what you want, don't waste your money on doing a custom cover. Unless you are making thousands of dollars off the book, in which case, I'll shut up.

 

[LadyVer]

I don't think the covers I buy for $20 are low quality.

http://www.amazon.com/Tara-Crescent/e/B00FY426O0

I think the words high-quality and low-quality are a bit confusing here.

What you get for $100+ is increased flexibility in what you want. For $20-$30, you get a pre-made cover. If you find a pre-made cover that will fit what you want, don't waste your money on doing a custom cover. Unless you are making thousands of dollars off the book, in which case, I'll shut up.

Nice covers.

It's probably more the issue like you say of flexibility. The issue of quality is more subjective. I subscribe to a few book designer and book review blogs. It's interesting to read their reviews on covers. Covers the reviewer hates, are covers that make me follow up on Amazon to see what the book is about. I've bought a few books this way.

 

[lovecraft68]

Generally what the higher priced covers through designers entail is the use of multiple pictures to create a better image. So you're paying for more than one photo as well as their photo shopping/design ability.

However...it is still a high profit on their end. Most cover designers have subscription services and pay as little as 40 cents photo. They download hundreds of photos and will use those to create your image without having to buy a specific one.

I recently paid $89 for a month at 123rf and downloaded 150 photos. I just went up and down looking at images that caught my eye and bought them. Many give me immediate plot bunnies as I spotted them and when I saved them I titled them that way or by what I saw them as "high priced escort" "cheating housewife" etc...

Well worth the money.

 

[lovecraft68]

I can't with the ones I buy. I supply the title and other information - I get a jpg that's set up for the Kindle store. I don't think I've ever heard of a cover art place that will give you the Photoshop.

There is a program called Gimp that is free and is a bit of a beginners photo shop. It isn't as good, but it does allow you to do some cool things to your covers. If you have the patience to learn anyway.

 

[lovecraft68]

Don't kid yourself. You can get good cover art for $30. Cover designers are thick on the ground in this advanced computer age. Even at a printing house that has cover designers on staff like RR Donnelley, you can get a professional-quality one for $100. This is where my falling out with LC started. A self-publisher who pays more than $50 for a cover has about zero chance of recouping production costs. Self-publishers need to be smart about this and sensible, not starry eyed, about their production costs, and I hate to see authors here led down an expensive garden path like this.

And yet my name comes up again.

Love me don't you?

I pay $5 a cover. I paid $50 for two that was it and they both more than paid for themselves.

 

[lovecraft68]

So let's do a little math involving cost/profit.

Now as I stated at this point I do not pay a lot for covers, generally a few dollars each. Occasionally I do spend more, but around the $25 range.

So above we have a person who declares $30 is too much. Okay, well....not really.

So the average e-book sells for $2.99 (many are more some do the .99 cent thing and I will not get started on how you're screwing yourself(and other sellers) with that) so sites take anywhere from 15% which is Smashwords and up to 50% which is Fiction for all and some others

So your profit per sale is $1.50-$2.45 per book depending.

To make up your $30 you need to sell say 15 books. Not too many. However it is a sad fact you can produce an e-book that can take months to sell 15 copies. Then again you can publish one that can sell a couple of hundred in a month.

I've had both and they more than pay for themselves.

Another thing to look at is this is a one time expense on a product that will be around for as long as e-books are going to be sold. I started publishing e-books in March 2011 so that $50 cover I "vastly overpaid" for is still selling 3-4 books a month, nothing lights out of course, but its making me $10 a month 36 months later and had some pretty good months when I first posted it.

So you will get your money back it may just take a couple of months. So it is a one time investment if you want to go that price. If you want to go on the cheap then it takes 3 or so sales to pay off.

So for $30 to seem "starry eyed" is short sighted pure and simple. Because fact is in any business you get one shot at a first impression and an eye popping cover can help with that.

The amusing thing about Pilot's posts is that his publisher showed up on the thread he referenced and asked what he though she paid for his covers? Guess how much? It was not $5, but he's not going to mention that, it would make him look bad.

Self publishing is trial and error in every facet of the game so the only way to really learn is to roll up your sleeves and get into it. There's good advice to be had from some people here, but it is advice and you have to decide what you want to try and how.

There are obviously some big mistakes that can be made, but for the most part it is nowhere near as complicated as some would make it.

And I would be remiss without one point to be made for any newcomers who don't know the posters here.

The above nasty rant from Pilot about self publishers and all his insults about how they can't get a real publisher to bite and etc...etc...

Pilot's publisher(the only one he can prove he has) is named Selena Kitt. Miss Kitt got her start right here on literotica. She did very well then decided to start publishing her stories.

She did so well with that she decided to start publishing other lit author's books for them.

So long story short? Pilot's publisher started as one of those self published authors he enjoys mocking and degrading. So what does that say about where he is?

take my simple advice go out there and do it. Find what works for you and don't let any alleged expert tell you you're foolish or starry eyed for wanting to invest in your babies.

 

[funinthesungirl19]

There is a program called Gimp that is free and is a bit of a beginners photo shop. It isn't as good, but it does allow you to do some cool things to your covers. If you have the patience to learn anyway.

Meh. Not worth my time. I pay between $20-$40, and I think that's a fair price. I'd rather spend the hours writing. The only time I've thought about things like Gimp are when I've wanted to price work at 99c. But at the end, I'd rather leave the design to the design people, who have vastly better eyes for this kind of stuff than I do.